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October 30, 2008
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October 30, 2008 |
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editorial Barack Obama for president A recent New York Times analysis of the presidential candidates’ stump speeches illustrates why Barack Obama is the best person to lead this country out of its current hard times. John McCain used most of his regular stump speech to attack Obama, then ended with a litany of ways that Americans should “fight” (complete with lots of fist pumping and repetition of the word “fight”). In contrast, Obama spent the bulk of his speech defining his plans to move the country forward. At the end, he called on audience members to sacrifice, work together, and find the best in themselves. In this time of great economic and global uncertainty, America does not need another leader who sows seeds of divisiveness and distrust, as evidenced not only in McCain’s stump speech, but in his entire campaign. America needs a leader who brings people together and calls for the best in our national character. That leader is Obama. Obama has also been prescient and wise in his policies. Early on he called for the sort of financial industry regulations that would likely have prevented the current economic collapse. He opposed the Iraq war from the start. He showed courage in calling for the repeal of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans and proposed far-reaching reforms to help protect the middle class, including a workable plan for affordable health care. But even more than knowing the right thing to do, Obama knows the right way to be. McCain, in Karl Rovian fashion, has ridiculed Obama’s eloquence as a weakness. He is wrong. The greatest American presidents — Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy come to mind — have been those who, in times of national crisis, rallied Americans with calls for both hope and responsibility. They were leaders who asked not a little, but a lot from individual women and men, who pushed Americans to give more, try harder, and build a nation of both compassion and accomplishment. As Obama said in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, America should be a better country than it’s been the past eight years. America should be smarter, wiser and more humane. If we elect Obama, we can be that country again.
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